Inventory management in the warehouse

Abstract

We began by reviewing the literature available – articles, research papers etc, that our sponsor felt would be helpful in developing and furthering our understanding of warehousing operations. Based on the literature available, we created a short summary of insights gained from each article and shared it with our sponsors before proceeding with the project. In order to develop Industry Specific Solutioning Templates, we needed to standardise the resource modelling, space modelling, capital expenditure estimation and operational expenditure estimation. After reviewing the literature and based on discussions with the sponsor, it was discovered that a critical point affecting not only the design of the warehouse in terms of space requirements, but also the operation costs in terms of the replenishment costs and picking costs, was the inventory in the warehouse. In view of the above, we developed a template to be followed in warehouse design and operation with particular emphasis on inventory storage quantity, placement and replenishment to answer the following questions: . How much inventory to store?, • Where to store this inventory?, • How to optimize the operations?.